Giant snowman draws crowds in Guilderland

Jennifer Lee - GUILDERLAND, N.Y. (NEWS10) - The Capital Region has seen a lot of snow this winter, so what to do with it all? Have a little fun!

One family in Guilderland took advantage of all the snow and built a gigantic snowman. But it wasn't all fun and games. The creative creation is drawing attention to a national cause.

After three months of plowing and snow blowing, a 25 foot Frosty the Snowman is sitting tall and proud in front of Scott Leininger's Guilderland home.

"Every time we got snow I would go out and plow the field, and I have a big snow blower, and we just threw it up on top of the pile, and we just kept adding snow," Leininger said.

The 36-year-old landscaper said he has a lot of downtime in the winter and thought the snowman would be a fun project. But this isn't the first time he and his family built a giant snowman. They built one four years ago outside his previous home.

"Nobody seems to mind," he said. "We get a lot of traffic, and everybody stopped in last night. We maybe had a dozen cars parked out front; people taking pictures."

Frosty has been the talk of the town, and people have been driving from all over to get a look for themselves.

"A good imagination," Mary Dunscombe of Middleburgh said. "With everything that he used to put it together with. You know the pipes."

Leininger said the hat itself is eight feet across and three feet tall and was made out of four inch drainage pipes. The eyes are wheelbarrow tires, and the nose is a traffic cone.

But Frosty is for more than just show. There is a special meaning behind it.

"My cousin is running in Iron Man in Lake Placid this summer, and it's to raise money for the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation," Leininger explained. "We figured we get a lot of traffic out here. Why not raise money for the donations and help the research."

Leininger's cousin, Kiel Weston, said his best friend's father has multiple myeloma - a type of cancer. So when he learned that the Iron Man competition was raising money for the foundation, he said he had to sign up.

Weston would like to raise $5,000. Head to their fundraising website, here, to donate.